


not uninvited everywhere

by firstaudrina



Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: F/F, Femslash February 2021
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29180358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Beth’s best girl. What’s that like?
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon, Beth Cassidy/RiRi Curtis
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	not uninvited everywhere

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](https://clockwork-hart1.dreamwidth.org/53291.html?thread=1071147#cmt1071147) at the FemFeb ficathon!

Beth puts her fingers in RiRi’s mouth, against the teeth that had been knocked out. Her surveying gaze is scientific, or maybe more like when they say serial killers have medical knowledge. She’s aware of the inside of mouths, and the blood there. When she pulls back, lip gloss is smeared across her fingertips, honey brown with gold flecks. Pat McGrath, the good shit. _Bronze Divinity_ is the color; RiRi liked the sound of that when she picked it up, turned it over and swatched it on the back of her hand. _Great drag name_ , she’d joked, and Beth told her to get it, bitch. Seeing it on Beth’s fingers now feels kind of perverse. 

“Teeth’ve never been straighter,” Beth teases with a flash of a grin that blights the rest of the gym for a minute, like a camera flash, making her blind. Right then, RiRi only sees Beth.

Before Coach, RiRi didn’t always get invited for gas station slushies and stolen booze slipped into canvas bags. Stunts on blacktop that she’d watch on Insta later, Beth and Addy trying to outdo each other, muscles and tendons straining and their teeth so white, sneakers bleached, eyes locked on each other. RiRi would double-tap the video and let her phone drop away, sliding between couch cushions as she jostled between friends, busy. Not uninvited everywhere. Popular. Not top bitch, sure, but one of them; not on the outside. 

Once she heard Beth leaving the locker room, saying, “We gotta get a bigger bottle, that shit went too fast last time.” RiRi hadn’t been there last time. She slid up between them smiling and said, “What are we talking?”

Beth looked at Addy and they both laughed, a stilted secret. “No,” Beth said, reaching out to poke RiRi’s cheek. “Just me and Addy.” 

RiRi made a face and rolled her eyes, went, _oh, sorry, didn’t realize you were staying on the isle of Lesbos tonight_. Her heart pounded, shut out, but she couldn’t show it. She was a little embarrassed and a little mad watching Beth’s turquoise Jeep peel out with the music blasting, two girls inside and room for no more. She would watch whatever they did later that night. Two taps, for the heart.

Beth’s best girl. What’s that like?

Things change after Addy goes stupid for Coach, but RiRi doesn’t feel like she owes Coach for that. She doesn’t have stars in her eyes for Colette French. Sure, she’s neat and small and tough, manicured and maintained. She’s got great boots. But all that precision is a coverup for stupid mistakes and bullshit decisions. RiRi’s mom color-codes Excel spreadsheets of their weekly events, the family budget, the grocery list. She knows about organization. She knows Colette French is sloppy. 

She knew it as soon as Coach got into that whole thing with Tacy and Beth. Why shoot the squad in the foot just to get into a pissing contest with a teenage cheer captain? If she wanted the squad to be strong, then why didn’t she want Beth’s strength? No one handed Beth top girl. She clawed her way to it. 

And this is all before RiRi gets kicked in the face. 

Beth always wants out but Addy can’t always oblige, and that’s where RiRi comes in. RiRi’s fun, and the fun never runs out. RiRi’s down. 

And RiRi’s mom is a softie, as long as it helps with the squad; she’ll fold for arms around her shoulders and a nestled hug, a wheedled _please_. If she won’t, then RiRi waits until she’s busy with post-work work, talking fast into that silly pop star headset and shuffling papers, planning squad boosters and looking like Barbie’s Big Day At The Office. Well. More like Barbie’s friend.

It’s easy to slip out, phone in hand and headphones in, “I’m going for a run,” and being waved off, running all the way to Beth’s. She rinses off the sweat while Beth puts her hair in braids to make it ripple; she pulls RiRi over still in a towel to dress her up. None of Beth’s clothes fit exactly but RiRi likes that, because it makes her aware that they’re Beth’s the whole time she’s wearing them. 

Beth’s nails look black but up close they’re a deep dark brick red, to go with her uniform. See, Coach? Beth isn’t just a team player. She is the team. 

She smoothes glittering highlight along the high points of RiRi’s face, emollient under warm fingertips on warm cheeks. She cleans up RiRi’s cupid’s bow the way she’s seen her do with Addy. “High class,” Beth declares, grinning. “They’re gonna go crazy for you.”

“Already do,” RiRi says, cheeky, and they look in the mirror together. Beth kisses her cheek, a big _smack_ that leaves behind only the sheen of lip balm, and later they’ll kiss for those soldier boys and it will taste like exactly nothing. 

“You like that?” Beth says, snagging a bottle from Private Buzzcut, talking out of the corner of her mouth and over her shoulder. “Pathetic. Uninspired. Why do we do those things for you, huh? You don’t deserve them.” 

RiRi laughs and sits in someone’s lap. She has a good time, she guesses. 

It’s like the whole thing with Sarge Will. RiRi can throw her hat in the ring because Addy never will and that means it’s something for her and Beth, just them. She doesn’t really think anything’ll ever happen, because even if he’s hot, Sarge Will is also totally old. But even if it does, it won’t be like she’s really with him; it’ll be about Beth, about winning. He won’t even register, but maybe Beth will look at her with that cool, smirking respect, because RiRi won. If she wins.

They talk about Sarge Will, what they’d do to him. Do you think he knows what to do? _Better than these high school boys who jam their fingers into you, don’t know the difference between ready and willing, dry and wet_. Addy said Jordy Jones could go down, at least. _She said that?_ Yeah, she said that. She didn’t tell you? 

Beth is silent. Then, _I bet Sarge Will knows what he’s doing. Bet he could bang you in the front seat of his car where anyone could see and you’d still want to_. The _you_ doesn’t feel like it’s for RiRi but she laughs, says, Hell, he could do me on the hood.

But Sarge Will is like the one Ken doll she used to batter around between her Barbies: an accessory, a prize, a plot device. He could be anyone. He doesn’t matter. If Beth had picked out one of those soldier boys, then it’d be him; if she chose a pimpled high school doofus who creamed his jeans at the sight of a short skirt, then RiRi would be winking and tossing her hair for him. It’s about her and Beth, or at least that’s what she hopes, because part of her knows there’s no her and Beth at all. 

It’s not the kind of thing you can explain to outsiders. The sound of it. Body sounds. Fleshy clapping of palm to palm, knees hitting up against hands, there to make sure they’re driving high enough. Sometimes the creak of an ankle or knee not oiled enough. Impact sounds. People think it’s so easy. They think because you wear a skirt, it’s nothing. 

Sweat and laundry, sweat and laundry. RiRi sweats through all her clothes and they pile up and she orders more, wears out more sports bras and leggings than anyone has any right to, buys ’em cheap and treats ’em disposable. No one ever thinks about that part of it, the gross part, the way sweat clumps up your foundation and gets in your eyes until they sting. How you smile anyway, even if you can’t see, even if your shoulder feels like it’s going to tear out of your socket, even if you land wrong and pain jolts your ankle like lightning.

Beth never gave it less than everything she had and she never shook, never trembled, never shivered. Addy frayed at the edges but she couldn’t be stopped. RiRi always came in third, but she came in gasping, sore, sweating, swearing. Beth would tug hard on her ponytail, grinning with her tongue curled behind her teeth. She used to let Addy stretch her out, the soles of their sneakers pressed together as they pulled towards each other, but now she puts her ankle up on RiRi’s shoulder, the tension of that muscle a bowstring between them.

RiRi tries, once or twice. She sees it when Addy turns the corner and Beth has to close her eyes. She sees Beth checking her phone all the damn time. She hears the strain in Beth’s voice under the sarcasm. Babe, she says, you can tell me if you want. 

Beth’s face gets candy-hard, mockingly sweet and twisted. She holds her fingers up in a V against her mouth and flicks her tongue between them. _Boo fucking hoo_ , she says. _Her loss_. 

Beth watches Addy. RiRi watches Beth. Waits for the day they all look at each other.

Before Playland. Before the fetus’ foot landed hard against RiRi’s perfect, beautiful teeth and splattered her blood on the mat. Before the thing with Coach and Sarge. Before all of it, Beth pulls RiRi through the hall by the hand and RiRi entertains the idea of being chosen, instead of being next in line.

“Does slushie count as a mixer?” Beth wonders. 

“Yeah, slap a fourteen-dollar price tag and an umbrella on it, you can sell it at one of those city bars,” RiRi jokes. 

Beth snorts. Their hands break apart when they get out the door. RiRi already has an eye on the bus when Beth says, “You fucking coming or what?”

She’s hanging half out of the Jeep, her hair a messy spill. Bracelets up and down her arms, white sunglasses on. RiRi almost looks around for Addy, but Addy isn’t here. She’s never here anymore. 

“You bet, bitch,” RiRi preens, her insides all sparks, and climbs in. 

Beth’s top girl. She always is. Sidepiece is flexible.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr [@firstaudrina.](https://firstaudrina.tumblr.com/)


End file.
